Shop.ca Hits First $1-Million Day

Today, Shop.ca announced that they hit an impressive milestone – all in less than a year of operation.

The Shop.ca Team in Nov. 2012.

In a press release, the eCommerce company revealed that they brought in $1-million in revenue in a 24-hour period for the first time. With the most important revenue and shopping days of the year coming up, it’s an extremely positive marker for Canada’s largest online retail destination.

The company also released some impressive internal metrics to describe the growth of its user base, and very importantly, the loyalty of those customers.

As of October 31st, sales have grown at a 171% compounded monthly growth rate since launch, and at an average order value (AOV) trending toward $200. Sales for the first week of November have already surpassed all of October, and is up over 1100% vs. same week in November 2012.

“I am extremely proud of what our incredible team has built in such a short time, about the commitment they have each and every day. Having a strategy is important, but execution excellence, passion and a relentless commitment to the Canadian consumer makes this a special company,” said Drew Green, ceo and founder of Shop.ca

Drew Green, co-founder of Shop.ca

Update: In conversation with Drew Green – Nov. 12

Green says that the $1-million day was predictable, given the company’s revenue growth over the past several months. It was, however, a pleasant surprise email from shop.ca co-founder Trevor Newell that alerted him that they hit the milestone a bit earlier than expected.

“My co-founder wakes up in the morning and does a 20-page KPI report, so we all got an email around 6:30 a.m. We got this email to say, ‘Oh my gosh we just did $1-million in a 24-hour period’ and yeah we’re pretty proud,” Green said. “We expected it to happen in Q4. It happened earlier than we thought.”

Part of the reason the news came as a surprise was that a sudden late-day surge just barely put them over the mark.

“We could see it building all day, but it really took off in the last few hours of that full 24-hour period. It was funny,” Green said laughing, “It wasn’t much more than $1-million.”

More high revenue days coming with holidays

Hitting the $1-million mark opens the door for several high revenue days over the holiday season.

“I think, given our trajectory, we’ll have days where we do over $2-million [or] over $3-million in a day. If we look at last year 50% of our sales came from between November 15 and December 15. So we [will] really hit the high-impact period for holiday shopping.”

For a company less than a year old, the success of shop.ca speaks not only to their customer retention and satisfaction, but the growth of eCommerce in Canada in general.

“The Canadian consumer is, as we predicted, ready for commerce. Everybody that’s doing a good job is growing at a nice rate. It’s so great to see because this is what we projected would happen.”